A web site monitoring system and method is a system utilizing an application to perform a process of monitoring the performance of a website. In today's information based society, success in business depends on providing potential customers with non-intrusive access to information via a website. As part of the process, businesses looking for new clients must provide a website that consistently performs well and is aesthetically appealing enough to make customers return. In some industries, where customers are required to provide information as part of an information or introductory transaction, the information provided and the steps performed prior to requesting specific customer information is critical to the successful performance of the website at selling products or identifying potential customers.
Because websites and the associated applications are a tremendous tool for driving business, optimizing the performance of the websites and applications is critical. Existing web site monitoring tools seek to optimize performance and availability of websites by ensuring that the infrastructure and underlying components are running and functioning at optimal operational capacity. Some monitoring tools perform this task by monitoring the pipes and backend parts associated with a website. Other applications perform website monitoring from an end user's perspective, monitoring all the visual elements or measuring against expected results from a given website or application. One common element in the current monitoring schemes is the use of pixels in order to capture data related to a single attribute, e.g. number of visitors to a website. However, there is not a website monitoring system that monitors from a business driven operational perspective that provides information concerning performance of the website based on a previously defined set of operational criteria. The ability to detect and capture this performance has been limited because traditional pixels have only been able to capture a single attribute. This requires the website owner to place multiple pixels on a webpage, occupying vital space on a webpage. Further, there has been no way to link or aggregate these pixels and the information captured. There is a need for a system whereby the business providing the website may efficiently capture, aggregate, and review the success and or failure of the website or application output from numerous perspectives, determining what aspects of the website are working and those that are not working and automatically receiving feedback concerning website performance in view of the operational criteria previously defined.